Please help with Crappy Windows Media edition and recording!

[blue2blue]

Metaphoric

 

Wish I could answer that question for you... I think it really depends on the unit in question. Multi-input FW boxes are a lot more reasonable than they used to be. And I'd be more inclined to go with the fewest number of boxes... OTOH, the modularity of things like the PreSonus INSPIRE (is it REALLY all-caps?) is intriguing...

 

 

But I'm afraid that this particular thread has been banging around so long me and Fatal are probably the only regulars who check back in on it here.

 

You probably ought to do a search for threads that might cover the specific question and if you don't find any, post a new thread that will probably get a lot more attention than this shop-worn one.

 

 

 

And, back to WMCE... bookmark this thread.

[FatalVision]

Metaorphic,

 

I am happy you found us and I know you will get a lot of great info from here! I really wish I had just gotten xp pro to avoid all these issues, but then again I really havn't had that many issues, yet. Anyway, its too late now, for me anyway.

About the firewire interfaces...

If you need 4 xlr inputs, I would just go with the firepod. Thats what I use.

It has 8 xrl inputs, all with phantom power, and its only 600 bucks. Maybe that sounds like a lot if you are on a budget, specially when you can get the firebox for 300 bucks, but its worth it. You really are going to want to have the extra inputs later on, and that unit only comes with 2! With the firepod you can record 8 channels of AUDIO at once! Plus, since you are asking about daisy chaining, if you have 2 of these units, or someone you know does, you can chain them together for 16 channels at once!!! They have updated drivers and firmware that improves this feature, although I have not tried it yet. Also, the firepod can be used as a standalone mixer with the new firmware upgrade, if that is any concern to you. Also, you need to have a recording program that supports the 8 at once recording feature. I believe that cubase sx, or even the upgrade from le that comes with the firepod will enable you to do this. I would go to www.musiciansfriend.com and read the reviews and see for yourself. Goodluck!

[FatalVision]

Blue,

 

you asked me a while ago about my ram footprint. I found that when I restart with my wireless connection and bluetooth off I am running 68 processes, my cpu jumps from 0 to 4% and sometimes 5, and my PF use jumps from the lowest 368 to 375 to highest 389. I don't know if this good or what, but I know its better than it was. And my wireless takes up so much friggin ram, I can't believe how high it goes when its on.

 

I have not re-installed my drivers yet without the AV and AS software turned off, nor have I used the patch yet. Do you know anything about the 1394 patch?

 

However, I think I am about done, I have changed and tweaked all I can for now. I think it will make a difference.

 

I have a question about my interface, a general question.

 

If I am recording from my sound module, with left and right channels, how should I do it? I have 3 options.

1) there are channels 1 and 2 which are very hot because they have preamps that are meant to be used with instruments, like a guitar plugged straight in. It sounds fine, but I don't know if I should be using the extra signal boost with a sound module.

2) I can use channels 3 and 4, which do not have an instrument pre amp, but which are very quiet. I have to have the knobs turned up all the way to get a decent signal.

3) there is a line input in the back that corresponds to channels 1 and 2, but cancels the preamps and knobs in the front. This is convienient because its in the back, but it is very soft. softer than 3 and 4.

Also, how can I get channels 1 and 2, which are each mono signals, into one stereo channel in my recording program?

I know you don't use the firepod, but perhaps you know about these things, or maybe somebody who uses the firepod would know. I am planning on e-mailing customer support as well.

Thanks, talk to you later!!!

[blue2blue]

Okay, first off: Holy carps!

 

That seems like a huge number of processes and a huge RAM footprint.

 

For contrast, I have 20-22 processes running after my machine is done booting up and everything has found everything else. My RAM footprint is between 120 and 130 MB.

 

 

I don't know where all those came from -- but I DO know that when I got my latest tower from Dell (it was a cheapo, it wasn't going to be my primary but it worked so well, it just sort of took over... and I was happy to give my laptop a bit of a break, as it had been chunking away fulltime for almost 2-1/2 years at the time) that IT had 68 processes running and a RAM footprint close to 200 MB. But that's still quite a bit under your RAM footprint.

 

When I got the machine, one of the first things I did was go into MSConfig's Startup tab and check the "Hide Microsoft Services" box, leaving all the third party services, virtually ALL of which were bogusware, offerware, wizurdware, etc, etc... I unchecked them all... and -- whaddya know -- not only did the machine reboot right up, it ran as though someone had snuck in and put a more powerful processor in it. (Well, it was DECIDEDLY sluggish wiht all that crap running.)

 

 

Anyhow, I strongly suspect that most of those services are unneeded. And if unchecking them "breaks" something, it's typically just a matter of re-checking the option box in the Services tab window.

 

I also went into the STARTUP tab window in MSConfig and removed stuff.

 

SOME stuff borders on MALWARE -- for instance, the punk-A POS Adobe Reader... which is about to be removed ONCE and FOR EVER from my machine when I finish here, since I see it has REINSTALLED itself in my bootup configuration. I don't need it -- since I have the far superior, faster loading generic PDF reader FoxitReader.

 

I did, indeed, uninstall other apps, though many are not a burden as long as they are not running in background. But if I knew I didn't need it, it went.

 

Unfortunately, I HAVE to have the crappy Apple media player/QT editor Quicktime Pro -- which, no matter how many times you take it out of your load profile always seems to sneak back in their. It is really a piece of garbage but I need it to deal with the Quicktime vids my camera puts out. It tries to REINSTALL itself in your boot profile every time you run it though. This is NOT a slag on Macs or Mac lovers -- but I GOTTA tell you I think Apple are really F'd up for the way that QT works. I will NEVER buy another piece of software from them. (And that was cemented when I tried to update my QT 6.5x to 7.0 so that it could play what some people call "mp4's" -- but not only was the update not free -- they wanted MORE than I paid for QT Pro in the first place just to jump a half an ordinal version... LAME LAME LAME... no, make that TOTALLY F'D.

 

Anyhow... sorry... it ALWAYS ticks me off when I find QTtask back in my bootprofile.

 

 

So... where was I?

 

Ah, yeah... you need to go through that thing with a MACHETE...

 

 

 

PS... there's a thread on number of services/processes running under XP over at GS: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?p=871062#post871062

 

There's not a lot of info in it but you can get an idea of what other folks' profiles are like. A number of people's machines are more stripped down than mine. (Of course, my machine is an all-purpose machine that I use for everything from web design to database development. And a wee bit o' recording. )

[FatalVision]

Well great, I got more work to do, just when I though I was done.

 

First of all, I looked at that site you sent me to, got some good info, and found this site:

http://web.archive.org/web/20041128020314/www.blackviper.com/WinXP/service411.htm

 

It just listed the services, and I compared the ones listed for XP home and Pro and everything was about the same, with the acception of a few services. I could save maybe 1 to 5 megs by disabling some services there, but I really don't want to mess with that stuff.

 

It also said "Do NOT use "msconfig" to disable services, type "services.msc" in the Run box instead! "

 

reason:

The reason is because with msconfig and Hardware Profiles, you can disable services that may be vital to boot your system. With the management console (services.msc) you cannot. Also, msconfig, while unchecking the box, is disabling the service.

 

The "Disable All" button also scares me. It should not even be there as no reason exists to justify disabling "everything."

 

However, like you said, I guess you can hide the microsoft services and then you are fine.

 

Anyway,

When I do that, here is a list of the stuff running:

Creative Labs Licencing service

Creative Service for CD rom access

Install Driver Table Manager (not running)

NICCONFIGSVC (from Dell)

M-Audio Uno Installer

 

Now, I suppose I could either uninstall the creative services or uncheck them, although I do use an mp3 player that uses their media player thingy to transfer files, so i don't know how that would affect it.

The Dell thing I think is something called "Quick set" which is actually pretty useful, but can be closed and therefore stopped I guess.

The M-audio thing is what I used to use for midi, so I guess I can stop that too.

 

Just tried to stop "quick set" and it says the dell thing is still running, so maybe thats not it.

 

I didn't list the wireless card stuff or AV and AS software because I need them.

 

 

As far as startup, there are a few things I can get rid of like "itunes helper" do you think that will change how itunes works? I can always try I guess. There are a lot of other things, but they are mostly windows type things, or other stuff I can always close like instant messenger.

 

I don't know how much lower I can get my stuff down. That sucks. At least I have 2 gigs of ram, so that helps.

 

Also, what do you know about indexing services? That guy from the site I listed said it is a huge resource hog and what not. But I don't know if it is important or what.

 

Thanks for your help as always!

[blue2blue]

Using the Windows Services manager may be superior to using MSConfig for the reason cited. Not sure on that. I think that sounds reasonable. It's nice because you can set stuff to be either manual, disabled or automatic. AND you can turn it on and turn it off. I use that to control SQL Server on my machine, since it's a sucks down a fair amount of resources (something around 40 or 50 MB, I'm thinking... anyhow, enough to keep it off when I'm not doing database work).

 

But it's my thinking that a lot of third party stuff doesn't show up in it (or much of any?) so you may still be stuck using the services window of MSConfig if you want to turn some stuff off.

 

With the stuff you mention, since it's not exactly system critical, why not try it and see?

 

My subscription service uses MusicMatch jukebox which is a bloated, buggy thang. AND it tries to install a bunch of "helper" apps in your boot profile. When I update it, I have to go in and turn them all off. At first I was afraid it would "break" some aspect of MMJB or my streaming service -- but it actually SPED UP the load time of the thoroughly sluggish MMJB. That's not to say that the iTunes helper will do that.

 

 

But back to those 68 processes you said were reported running... that was running, right? With no apps running?

 

I mean, the very short list of services in your post above and the MS services certainly shouldn't add up to 68 running processes... were we talking at cross purposes, or something? And that RAM usage sounds very high for a machine right after booting... that was before running any apps, yeah?

[FatalVision]

Yes,

 

the things mentioned were after re-booting and after closing everything that was critical to recording except I did keep open my AS and AV software (you can never be too careful), haha. But maybe I should close them.

The list of things I mentioned are the only services that I can actually disable that I am not using. My wireless card has like 3 or 4 different things going on, as well as my PC cillin. So, even if I stop the creative stuff and the itunes helper from startup and my old midi driver, is that really going to help me all that much? Its worth a shot. At a certain point I get tired of dealing with all this stupid crap and just wish that everything could just work itself out, just like in that perfect world I don't live in!

 

Everything has been working very well so far though. I have not attempted running all 8 tracks since my last recording, but perhaps I will try. Since the firepod has a blend control, I don't have to enable the monitors through Nuendo, which will save processing power (only if you are playing live with a band). Also, all the other tweaks I'm sure have done a lot of good compared to what I was running before.

 

A question about the processor scheduling:

Should I switch it back to programs when I am not recording? Or is that bad to do all the time?

 

Question about Windows XP MCE:

What is really the difference between MCE and Pro? Seems all the same except for the media center crap that we unchecked.

 

Also...

I heard from an studio guru that if you use a seperate drive to record your audio onto through usb 2.0 (this is for laptops), (which is better because my firepod is firewire) and the hd is fast like a sata 100 or 400, that your system will work much better because you take the workload off of your system drive and just let it work the programs, and let the external drive do the writing work. Is this true? My friend tried it on his crappy old laptop and with his crappy firewire drive and he said even that made a huge difference.

I have a partition that dell gave me on my drive, does that work in a similar way?

 

So many questions, thanks in advance...

Fatal

[daklander]

 

Originally posted by blue2blue SOME stuff borders on MALWARE -- for instance, the punk-A POS Adobe Reader... which is about to be removed ONCE and FOR EVER from my machine when I finish here, since I see it has REINSTALLED itself in my bootup configuration. I don't need it -- since I have the far superior, faster loading generic PDF reader FoxitReader. Unfortunately, I HAVE to have the crappy Apple media player/QT editor Quicktime Pro -- which, no matter how many times you take it out of your load profile always seems to sneak back in their. It is really a piece of garbage but I need it to deal with the Quicktime vids my camera puts out. It tries to REINSTALL itself in your boot profile every time you run it though.

 

 

If I may interject.

I too use FoxitReader on my windows machine. I have found that some pdf files will not print all the information. Where I notice it the most is pdf flyers I've put together with a tool on my Broker's website. The areas in those flyers where I input my information do not print though any pictures add to the flyer will. Of course, speaking with their techs, I'm told I must use Adobe Reader because that's what the flyer tool is built to run.

 

As to the quicktime, have you tried the quicktime alternative? It's done wonders for me though I'm not is a position where I am a heavy QT user. The QT files I've needed to see have played fine on it.

[blue2blue]

Thanks for the input, Dak!

 

I'll keep an eye out for problems with the Foxit PDF reader. So far so good. I guess...

 

 

You know, when I was hassling with finding a player for "Mp4" files, I tried QuickTime Alternative and, since it apparently requires the QT codec for operation, I was still stuck, since I was stuck wtih QT 6.5x codec. THAT was irriating to find out.

 

BUT, very happily, I stumbled across someone recommend VLC Player which DOES play all the current QT and allied formats as far as I can tell -- anyhow it plays Mp4s and is HUGELY less irritating than that $@$#%* PoS QT player (which I still have to have for my cam) and I didn't have to pay a DIME for it -- unlike the $34 it would have cost me to "upgrade" QT Pro 6.5x to QT7 -- more than it cost me to buy it in the first place. I just wish I could lose QT Pro once and for all. It ticks me off EVERY time I run it 'cause I know the moronic PoC is going to put its QTtasks "loader" in my boot profile seemingly out of pure malevolence.

 

[NOTE to Steve Jobs... that $30 you guys got out of me for QT Pro combined with the $34 "upgrade" fee JUST in order to play the latest QT/Apple formats -- and what an irritating, illogical, poorly interfaced piece of stuff it is -- already helped rule out an iPod for me from you guys. And it's pretty well assured that my antipathy to it will assure that that $30 is the last penny Apple will be getting out of me.]

 

 

 

FV

 

Yeah... I don't know what to tell you about the AV stuff. I don't use background AV stuff because tests show that the latest viruses (which are typically the ones you're most in danger from) "fool" the major AV player 80% of the time. (Blackhats simply use Norton and Macaffee as benchtests... if THEY catch it, it's not ready for release.

 

 

[FWIW: I DO religiously use a hardware firewall at home and ZoneAlarm on my laptop. I regularly scan for problems using Trend Micro's free online Housecall AV/malware scanning. And I try to be VERY careful about what I let down off the net onto my machine. I'm VERY leery of unfamiliar sites -- after catching a malware worm as it was trying to install from a "lyrics" site. Apologies if I'm repeating myself. I haven't looked at my posts above, written over a period of some time to see what I've said before. Heaven knows I think it's rare when I say ANYTHING anywhere I haven't said before somewhere.]

 

 

It's certainly my understanding that a a completely separate drive -- and not a "slave" drive on the second/slave channel of your main drive's IDE cable -- will improve performance in audio apps.

 

The consensus seems to be to keep your sytsem files and apps on your main drive and then, either on a separate IDE (I'm a little hazy on SATA particulars) port where it's the master or on a FW or USB2 channel. (I've HEARD both ways on whether or not having a FW drive on the same channel as your interface will slow or interefere with operation. I've avoided it, though I guess I could put a FW drive on the FW throughput of my MOTU box.

 

I wasn't too sanguine about the performance of my USB 2 drive on my laptop, as USB 2 was getting a drubbing in the early days from FW advocates (and I DO believe FW is more robust in some signifcant ways)... but the USB2 drive I got for backups seemed -- even with only a 2 MB cache -- to be a decent performer (at least compared with the 7200 RPM drive in my laptop, which I shopped hard to find).

[daklander]

A VLC player for windows? I'll look it up. I have one on my Linux box and it works well so far.

 

Thanks for that.

[blue2blue]

Yeah... I was so happy I found it... I'd been trying to watch an mp4 video and a pal kept sending me mp4's 'cause he knew I had QT Pro... too bad QT Pro required a paid update to be able to play mp4s...

 

Open source community to the rescue:

 

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

 

(Source code available, too, of course, for you compile it yourself types.)

 

Looks like there are versions for a WHOLE lotta OS's.

 

 

Download VLC Select your operating system to download VLC binaries: * Windows * Mac OS X * BeOS * Debian GNU/Linux * Ubuntu Linux * Mandriva Linux * Fedora Core * Familiar Linux * YOPY/Linupy * Zaurus * SUSE Linux * Red Hat Linux * WinCE / PocketPC * Slackware Linux * ALT Linux For the other operating systems supported, there are no precompiled binaries. You will have to get the source code for VLC and its required libraries and build them yourself: * NetBSD * OpenBSD * FreeBSD * Solaris * QNX * Gentoo Linux * Crux Linux

 

 

 

I just love stuff like this. There can be some rough spots in the open source development process and not everything is aces -- but so many free softwares are as good and often better than the commercial offerings that you just gotta say... hey, that's cool.

 

I'm a big MySQL fan, too. (But I'm playing both sides of that street... I just got a ASP.NET 2/ SQL Server host account so I could see what's going on at the dark end of the street.)

[daklander]

 

Originally posted by blue2blue Yeah... I was so happy I found it... I'd been trying to watch an mp4 video and a pal kept sending me mp4's 'cause he knew I had QT Pro... too bad QT Pro required a paid update to be able to play mp4s... Open source community to the rescue: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ (

 

 

Thanks. That download hearkens back to dialup days. Took nearly an hour to download onto this laptop and I'm running on quite fast cable. It came down well under 5kbps.

[blue2blue]

Ah... nostalgia...

 

I had a DL like that lately... it was only like 15 MB but it was just trickling in...

 

Back in the old days, seemed like server speed/traffic wasn't that big a deal... now with a lot of folks on multi-mbps hookups, the servers start showing their limitations -- particularly in the non-commercial/non-profit world.

[Dylan Walters]

Hey Guys,

 

I just wanted to chime in here about disabling services in XP. From my experiences I would highly recommend NOT using MSConfig to turn services on and off. I've had critical system services stop working completely after using this tool. I don't know why this tool doesn't work well for services, but it has for me with multiple systems. I'd recommend using the Services Snap-in instead. YMMV.

[blue2blue]

I'm not even embarrassed to say I have NO idea what the "Services Snap-In" even IS...

 

 

I'm not embarrassed because I just came from the MS TechNet page for it:

 

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/3c5945ee-afb8-43ce-b39d-50e6d5b89bf81033.mspx?mfr=true

 

And it has NO information on what Services Snap-In is or does or how you use it... just a handful links to general Services information. Which MIGHT accidentally lead to some info on the Services Snap-In... but I don't think there's ANY reason to be sanguine about the chances.

 

 

Is it, perchance, the "page" in the Management Console for services? That's all I can figure it might be and I'm only figuring that because it's the only Services interface I can think of off hand (besides MSConfig)... anyhow I definitely do use the Mangement Console to turn some services on and off as I need them. (For instance MS SQL server.)

 

 

You know, I think XP is basically a really decent OS -- but I have to tell you that MS's documentation and online "references" are an UTTER DISGRACE.

 

Thanks for letting me vent.

[dwrecker]

Can the XP Pro "Upgrade Version" be installed on a PC that was preloaded with MCE ?

[blue2blue]

I'd check Microsoft on that... but, again, before spending your money, it might be worth a giggle to try the 5 or 10 minutes of work (not counting reading instructions ) involved in stripping down MCE to its almost-identical XP Pro base. (MOST Of the work will be in removing all the crapware [AOL offers, 30-day Anti-Virus trials, etc] that big name vendors pimp into their boxes.)

 

(Again, the main thing missing in MCE appears to be the IIS server and some network functionalities that allow remote users to log into corporate networks and VPNs. And manyu of IIS's database and web serving capabilities (also NOT in XP Home) are now available for free from MS (Under the Express free dev product line), if you're a web/database developer (like me) who needs them to work with ASP.NET stuff.)

 

 

I'm not saying that, for sure, everything you need will work in MCE. As Phil noted above, there may be some stuff that simply doesn't work with MCE. Certainly, official support for MCE is offered by relatively few audio/recording companies -- presumably mostly for the commercial/economic reasons noted above that make testing and official support for an 11th hour product like MCE impractical for the great majority of specialty manufacturers.

[ScanMan413]

hello all- I was referred to this thread by metaorphic -we've been talking about the WMCE/XP thing on another forum.

 

Blue, a question; I have a Dimension desktop with MCE and I also have a copy of XP Pro (by copy I mean a full purchased copy that I bought and never used)-I was on with Dell tech support and they tell me that there is no biggie installing XP Pro- I just need to download some of the drivers after the install- have you had any experience doing such an install? I figure I'm ahead of the game since I don't have to buy XP PRo- or should I just try the stripping down first? I would be using this PC only for my recording- I have another desktop I use for my day to day stuff. If installing XP Pro is easier, I'd rather do that-just wondering which drivers do you think XP would not recognize/support?

[blue2blue]

In your situation, with a full copy of XP Pro ready to go, I'd say go for it. No matter how old or new any copy is, you're gonna wanna do a full Windows update once it's installed. (That was one of the first things I did last spring with WMCE, since I knew there were some security updates I needed.)

 

 

I don't think you're missing anything except the Media Center stuff by going with XP -- as far as I know, WMCE is, at core a slight variant on XP (less support for corporate network/VPN stuff). Any updated stuff in WMCE would almost certainly be covered by Windows updates on XP Pro.

 

 

It might take a little longer on the clock -- but you'll actually do less work than if you were to do a thorough cleaning/tweaking on your typical commercial box installation... (most of that is just scratching your head and going... do I really need this systray media player gizmo? [hint: you don't])

 

 

But you'll have a nice, tight, clean OS install. Minimial -- crapware will have been installed on it... it'll be creamy... like silk sheets... er, I may need to get out more.

 

That said, you'll still want to do some tweaking. Windows default install is a bit puffy, itself. The aforementioned tweaking sites can help you pare off some of those extra pounds Redmond packs in.

 

But, yeah, crack that shrinkwrap.

 

 

Ah, the smell of a new OS...

[aerorockjax]

I finally just went ahead and just bought a firebox used from ebay. The seller didn't include the cubase le with it but i bought sonar home studio 4. I also used audacity with it and that works fine too. Note, I did turn off all the media center extensions that blue2blue mentioned and all seems to be working fine so far.

 

btw, thanks blue2blue you were very helpfull!

[blue2blue]

 

 

 

Maybe I should do a lecture series...

 

 

[ScanMan413]

Heya Blue, i've been so busy at work, I never got around to installing Pro-got my firebox so I installed it and thought I would give it a shot with just disabling as much as I could of MCE first- then things got busy again and I'm just now getting back to playing with it again. I do have a question about connecting everything ,but I don't want to post in wrong forum-and actually I came right to this forum and didn't really check out what other topics there are-I will do that and see if I can get an answer. It has to do with the best way to connect a synth/workstation, drum machine, mic, guitar-already hooked up to an analog 4 bus/group mixer and a multitrack recorder.......